A controversial new law decriminalising the possession of small amounts of heroin, marijuana, cocaine and other illicit substances was quietly slipped on to the statute books in Mexico yesterday.

The move provoked little fuss either in Mexico itself or across the border in the US, which in the past has resisted anything that might be seen as going soft on drugs.

"This is not legalisation. This is regulating the issue," insisted Bernardo Espino del Castillo, the Attorney General, in an attempt to play down the significance of the new measure. The government made sure there was no fanfare or grand announcement after the law was finally passed at the end of last week.

Mexico is enmeshed in a violent war with drugs cartels and traffickers that has claimed more than 11,000 lives in the past two-and-a-half years, and it is keen to explore any new approach that might ease the situation. Officials believe that the law will ease pressure on the country's overcrowded prisons and allow police to concentrate on dealers and smugglers.

The surge in narcotics trafficking and drug addiction go hand-in-hand with destructive free trade policies which have fueled their growth. NAFTA, in particular, has triggered a massive migration of people who have been pushed off the land because they couldn't compete with heavily-subsidized agricultural products from the US. Many of these people drifted north to towns like Juarez which became a manufacturing hub in the 1990s. But Juarez's fortunes took a turn for the worse a few years later when competition from the Far East grew fiercer. Now most of the plants and factories have been boarded up and the work has been outsourced to China where subsistence wages are the norm. Naturally, young men have turned to the cartels as the only visible means of employment and upward mobility. That means that free trade has not only had a ruinous effect on the economy, but has also created an inexhaustible pool of recruits for the drug trade.

Washington's Merida Initiative--which provides $1.4 billion in aid to the Calderon administration to intensify military operations--has only made matters worse. The public's demand for jobs, security and social programs, has been answered with check-points, crackdowns and state repression. The response from Washington hasn't been much better. Obama hasn't veered from the policies of the prior administration. He is as committed to a military solution as his predecessor, George W. Bush.

....SNIP

"The outlawing and criminalizing of drugs and consequent surge in prices has produced a bonanza for producers everywhere, from Kabul to Bogota, but, at the Mexican border, where an estimated $39,000m in narcotics enter the rich US market every year, a veritable tsunami of cash has been created. The narcotraficantes, or drug dealers, can buy the murder of many, and the loyalty of nearly everyone. They can acquire whatever weapons they need from the free market in firearms north of the border and bring them into Mexico with appropriate payment to any official who holds his hand out." ("The US-Mexico border: where the drugs war has soaked the ground blood red", Hugh O'Shaughnessy The Independent)

It's no coincidence that Kabul and Bogota are the the de facto capitals of the drug universe. US political support is strong in both places, as is the involvement of US intelligence agencies. But does that suggest that the CIA is at work in Mexico, too? Or, to put it differently: Why is the US supporting a client that appears to be allied to the most powerful drug cartel in Mexico? That's the question.

14. The US is an expert in creating black markets and huge profits for what is

deemed illicit, and then the profits in rounding up that illicit trade, and the US does it over and over again. And the tax payers pay and pay and pay. And the ignorant element of our population falls for it again and again and again. It's the same old shit, over and over again. God am I sick of it... Prohibition worked so well we love to repeat it again and again. And we have more people in prison than any other industrialized nation, oh, it works so very well.

One day I hope the US can figure out how to provide solutions for things, but I've been waiting for that far too many decades now. What a F'en mess. The US solution to things is war and/or punishment.

Often I think things would work better if the US did nothing about many things. And stuck to some basics, like getting our failed educational system working.

18. I have never heard Lou Dobbs say anything - never listened to him.

It appears that Santa Barbarans are beginning to feel the heat from the Mexican drug war. The latest indication is last week's announcement by U.S. Forest Service and Sheriff's Department officials that La Brea Fire was started by a cooking fire left by tenders of an illegal marijuana grow in Los Padres National Forest. The investigation into origins of the 225,000 marijuana plants-valued, according to the Sheriff's Department, at $686 million-that authorities have eradicated in Santa Barbara County this year alone is being kept largely under wraps. However, Sheriff Bill Brown said evidence has been discovered linking many of the farms to drug traffickers from Mexico

The incident began when two campers, who had been staying at the Aliso Park area west of New Cuyama, stumbled upon the illegal plants. According to a report by Sheriff's spokesperson Andrew Sugars, the campers were then approached by two Hispanic men who requested that the campers not leave until the arrival of their boss, who spoke English. Becoming suspicious of the situation, the campers packed up their gear and attempted to leave. On the way out, they passed a truck headed in the opposite direction. The truck stopped and a man waved to the fleeing campers. When the campers did not stop, the driver returned to his vehicle and began pursuing, at times coming "dangerously close to the campers' vehicle," Sugars noted.

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